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1.2.1-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 1.2.1: The Evening of a Day of Walking Finally, we get to this chapter! It is one of my favorites. I wonder what it says about me that all of my favorite parts are before we meet any main character but Valjean. I should probably warn you guys that I have a LOT of Valjean feels. I wish I knew what time sunset is in Digne in October so I’d know how long Valjean was wandering around trying to find a place to stay. It was an hour before sunset when he arrived and then around eight when he made his way to the church. Living in an area with hundreds of thousands of people, I find it really hard to imagine places that are so small that everyone in town known almost immediately that a weird stranger has shown up. It seems a bit distressing to be able to say that you know literally everybody around. There was already not a lot to do with the technological state and long travel times and there you can’t even meet new people. Plus even if you weren’t an ex-convict imagine the staring. I find it odd that people do not immediately figure out what he is, just have their suspicions and that they are so interested in him. Digne is apparently only a four-day walk from Toulon and the convicts do not get to choose where they go so I would have thought they’d be pretty used to parolees passing through but they all act like they’ve never seen an ex-convict before. Does everyone who was arrested go on parole when they are released? Just those who commit ‘serious’ crimes and land in places like Toulon? Is it permanent parole always or is Valjean just a special case? At least I think he’s supposed to be on permanent parole here. Valjean’s behavior here is very interesting. He’s very meek and polite, respectfully removing his cap and saluting to the gendarme who can’t be bothered to acknowledge this. And he even promptly goes to the town hall to show his papers. Does everyone need to do that or just convicts? He probably would have made out better if he sort of showed his papers and got them signed or whatever before he left but he’s trying to be a good little parolee at this point. Valjean shows himself to be optimistic to the point of foolishness when he immediately heads to the best inn in the countryside. This is his fourth day on parole at this point and he’s already gotten a taste of what people think of men like him. And yet he apparently tries to get the best service. I mean, I can’t blame him after nineteen years in prison but he had to have known that that probably wasn’t going to happen. And even if he could, he only spends money he’s earned outside of prison so he can keep all of his hard-earned savings and then he plans to blow it on a super-nice room when the world’s crappiest mattress would probably be overly comfortable at this point? This is the beginning of my belief that Valjean just does not have a good grasp of money. He starts off having so very little that he cannot understand money it terms of normal people who don’t have to make eighteen sous on a good day feed and clothe nine people and then there is no money at all for nineteen years in prison and now he sees no problem getting rid of all of his money all at once. I suppose that Valjean is just lucky that the innkeeper bothered to check that Valjean was really an ex-convict instead of just turning him out for being dirty and looking poor like what probably would have happened today. At least he got to sit down and be warm. I wonder how cold it would really be in France in mid-October. Cold enough to not want to sleep outside but nothing serious, I don’t think. I think that the innkeeper could at least feed him if he’s going to let him sit around for awhile. There’s really no harm from that even if he doesn’t want to risk having a convict sleeping under the same roof. My version had the innkeeper tell Valjean “I cannot receive you, sir.” I assume with ‘sir’ that he used vous and that’s a little surprising since he is now kicking Valjean out for being a convict and I would have expected him to be disrespectful here. But he also tries to hide the real reason so I guess he’s trying to be refined and classy in his rejection. But Valjean will just not make it easy. I wonder if he was being difficult on purpose or if he really didn’t understand why he was being turned out. He got very upset when the innkeeper spelled it out for him. Valjean is being a little melodramatic about dying of hunger (surely he’s been closer to starving to death in his time) but he’s had a tough day and a tough past few days and a tough nineteen years and his life before then kind of sucked, too, so I will cut him some slack. Did he have nothing else to eat all day? Surely he could have found something. I feel like Valjean probably could have gotten a very good night sleep in a corner of the stable somewhere since it was closer to what he had in prison. I wonder how long it took him to actually be able to sleep on a wooden mattress (seriously? A wooden mattress?) in prison. An inability to sleep couldn’t have made the adjustment any easier. "I am in the habit of being polite to everyone. Go away!” That’s such a strange thing to say but, well, it’s hard to imagine someone being politer about kicking someone out. And he even asked if Valjean could read instead of just assuming he couldn’t. I find it very interesting that Valjean was spending all this time arguing against the obvious excuses that the innkeeper was coming up with for why he couldn’t stay but the minute the innkeeper mentioned Valjean’s status as a convict he just turned and left without another word. I wonder if he tried the worse inn before his convict status was known if he would have just been able to stay there. I feel so bad for Valjean in this chapter! He’s just so miserable at being turned out everywhere and ‘I’m not even a dog!’ Oh, I know he’s not a good person now (though this chapter really does not make that clear and just paints him as a terrifying-looking extremely patient and accepting victim) but that kind of doesn’t seem really important in the face of all this misery. Every time it describes his as ‘crushed’…Hugo describes misery and angst so very well. I especially liked the line ‘He saw nothing of all this. People who are crushed do not look behind them. They know but too well the evil fate which follows them.’ He’s just so depressed he forgets that he’s hungry and tired and keeps wandering around. I’ve never been so upset or distracted that I forgot to be tired OR hungry, let alone both. He’s just so upset by what is basically just the latest in a long line of rejections that he just disassociates for awhile and walks all over town, probably frightening everybody out of their wits. This part strikes me as very interesting “The stranger turned round and replied gently, “Ah! You know?—”” That Valjean would be GENTLE and so heartbreakingly accepting here before his redemption. He doesn’t even offer up any protest, either. He is seriously breaking my heart here. At this point he sort of reminds me of post-redemption Valjean so I guess he doesn’t *completely* change, especially with his response to suffering. And before he came here he was wondering if he *could* discover some shelter. He doesn’t really have an in-between, does he? He’s either really really hopeful or completely crushed. In my edition, the innkeeper at the second place called Valjean ‘comrade’ which is unintentionally kind of funny because I only have one association with that word. It’s interesting and I think a perfect way to describe this Valjean that his face “began by seeming humble, and ended by seeming severe.” Valjean might look out of place at the first fine place he tried but he fits right in here. It’s his bad luck one of the other guests recognizes him from before. Nice try pretending you’ve forgotten a name, Hugo. The fact that Valjean has “a vague appearance of comfort, mingled with that other poignant aspect which habitual suffering bestows”…I could quote every single description of him in this chapter, I swear to God. I’d probably steer clear of him if I saw him like this in real life (or, I guess, the 21st century western equivalent) but reading this I want to give him a hug and take him home with me though he would totally rob me blind. He’s not GOOD at theft, though, so it would be fine. What kind of sociopathic children just throw rocks at strangers? I know I never threw rocks at people. Seriously. And he was reduced to trying to find shelter in a jail and he was still turned out! I wish I could say that that was the saddest part. Though if Valjean had offered to pay he probably could have slept there. Valjean knocks on a random house hoping to find a little pity in such a happy place (I wonder how he’d react if someone like that came to his door trying to find a place to stay while he’s happy with Cosette. I think he’d probably turn him out, too, so as not to risk Cosette). I would probably freak out if an ex-con randomly rang my doorbell trying to get shelter, too, though I wouldn’t threaten him with a gun if he’s not being particularly threatening and just begging for something so shame on you, random peasant. And I’d give him a damn glass of water, maybe even a bagel or something. I suppose Valjean realizes that nobody in this damn town has any pity except the bishop and his sister (though he doesn’t know that they exist) as he knocks so hesitantly that they don’t even here him. At this point, I feel like he’s being a bit masochistic. Do people really talk like ‘It seems to me, husband, that’? Why not use his name? Or why use an address at all? Saying ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ sounds like something newlyweds would do and nobody else and they have two children so I’d say they were married for at least three years. Trying to sleep in a dog’s kennel and getting kicked out of there, too, and not even by a human starts to make it clear that convicts had it worse than dogs do. And now the only clothes he has (rags!) are even more ripped up. I wonder where they get the clothes they give to prisoners. Are they old clothes that other people are just going to throw away or sell because of how bad they now are? It says Valjean is so tired he cannot even move right before he has to fight off a damn god and look for better shelter. I feel he probably could have killed the dog if he wanted to, though he probably would have gotten hurt, so good for him for not killing that dog. Valjean reacts to a lack of stars in the sky much better than certain other people I could mention. I can’t imagine how hostile nature must have seemed to him that night if he decided to take his chances with the town again. I wonder if it rained and if he had had to sleep outside the previous nights he was on parole. Probably or he had very cheap lodgings. It’s so weird to think of a town as having gates that close and you’re just out of luck for the night. It’s like imposing a curfew. I can’t even blame him for shaking his fist at the church because, seriously, what was the last good thing that happened to him? Being let out of Toulon? That’s really not working out for him very well, is it? Sometimes I have to wonder if, to protect himself and his redemption, Valjean kind of misremembers how bad this period of his life was when he’s going on about how he hasn’t suffered enough for whatever it is he’s thinking about. I can’t believe that it took until this point after everything else that has happened for pretty much his entire life for Valjean to temporarily be out of hope and just drop down to sleep in a doorway. It’s no surprise that he barely closes his eyes before he’s told he has to leave again. At least this woman (possibly since she doesn’t realize he’s a convict and thinks he’s a veteran) is not only polite but offers him some practical solutions and even gives him money! Any one of the people who didn’t want him nearby could have told him about the bishop but they didn’t. I wonder if Valjean would have been able to sleep so easily on that stone. Sure he’s exhausted but I think that would be marginally less comfortable than wood. It’s very charitable of this woman (a Marquise) to assume he was a soldier. I wonder what such a high-ranking noblewoman (Wikipedia assures me that the rank holds the equivalent of somewhere between a duke and an earl) is doing here. Probably visiting the bishop and his sister (mostly the sister, I wouldn’t wonder, since the bishop doesn’t care about these things). I don’t blame Valjean for not wanting to be judged and condemned yet again and so just pretending that he has no money since admitting they wouldn’t let him stay got his life threatened at that peasant’s house. Valjean is reasonably civil to her since she’s trying to help even though he is seriously not in the mood. And he doesn’t actually need the four sous since no one will let him spend any money but it’s four sous and he’s reduced to sleeping in a doorway so I have no problem with that. I wonder how she’d react if she knew the truth about him being a convict? I just love how the chapter ends with her telling him to knock on the bishop’s house. He says he’s knocked everywhere but she just knows that that’s not true because if it was he’d have a place to stay. The 1998 film had its problems but I love how it portrayed this scene.